In the U.S. school funding comes from a combination of three main sources. This balance varies from state to state, but on average it rounds to about 10% federal money, 45% from the state, and 45% local property taxes. The leading cause for our wide variation of poor and well education across school districts is our latter contributor, property taxes. Property values vary tremendously from neighborhood to neighborhood, district to district; and with them, tax revenues range far and wide just as well.
Policymakers cite the importance of funding for student achievement, but there is a common argument against fair funding: the districts that do receive large state and federal funding to make up for low local sources, primarily property taxes and parent contributions, highlight the fact that funding is often not enough to make up for the inequalities in a region that lead to poor student achievement.
Obviously many other factors come into play outside of the classroom that can affect the ability for success with each student, yet it is still most apparent that the ability of school finance systems to fairly deliver resources to students is an essential precondition for the delivery of high quality education. They require a sufficient level of funding that is fairly distributed to address the additional needs generated by poverty, English language learner status, student disabilities, and other special needs. Schools educating students with these needs require additional funding to support the programs and services that will provide all students with the opportunity to succeed.
In January of this year, 2017, The National Report Card (NRC) came out with a special report to compare school funding across the nation. The NRC is an organization which evaluates and compares the extent to which state finance systems ensure equality of educational opportunity for all children, regardless of background, family income, place of residence, or school location. Using data collected by the U.S. National Census Bureau, the NRC found huge problems within our school funding systems that leave far too many students at a great disadvantage when compared to their wealthier peers.
Key findings of the NRC report include:
Funding levels show large disparities, ranging from a high of $18,165 per pupil in New York, to a low of $5,838 in Idaho.
Many states with low funding levels, such as California, Idaho, Nevada, North Carolina, and Texas, are also low-effort states, that is, they invest a low percentage of their economic capacity to support their public education systems.
Fourteen states, including Pennsylvania, North Dakota, New York, and Illinois, have regressive school funding. These states provide less funding to school districts with higher concentrations of need as measured by student poverty.
Students in certain regions of the country face a double disadvantage because their states have low funding levels and do not increase funding for concentrated student poverty. These flat funding states include Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida in the Southeast, and Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico in the Southwest.
Only a handful of states – Delaware, Massachusetts, Minnesota and New Jersey – have progressive school funding. These states have sufficiently high funding levels and significantly boost funding in their high poverty districts.
Most importantly, the report found that states with unfair school funding perform poorly on key indicators of resources essential for educational opportunity. In these states, access to early childhood education is limited; wages for teachers are not competitive with those of comparable professions; and teacher-to-pupil ratios in schools are unreasonably high.